Beirut: The pro-Hezbollah daily Al Akhbar reported on Wednesday that a Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) corporal, identified as Atef Mohammad Sa’ad Al Din, defected his post in the eastern town of Arsal at dawn on Tuesday and joined the ranks of the Jabhat Al Nusra Front.
LebanonDebate.com, an online news outlet, claimed for its part that the corporal may have defected with a complement of 11 soldiers although this could not be confirmed. As Gulf News went to press, the LAF Directorate of Orientation was mum on the rare development, aware that the news — if accurate — could encourage unpatriotic elements to organise a split in what was the sole functioning institution in the country.
At first, the corporal was presumed kidnapped before a YouTube video emerged showing him in front of an Al Nusra banner, praising its objectives. Al Akhbar stated that security sources revealed that the corporal “stole three M16 rifles, military equipment and night vision goggles,” although the assertion was impossible to verify.
Sa’ad Al Din hailed from the Khirbet Daoud area near Arsal, which is a predominantly Sunni town that supports the uprising against President Bashar Al Assad of Syria, and assigned to serve in a super sensitive area between Al Labweh and Arsal where extensive confrontations and infiltrations are daily occurrences.
Although impossible to know what motivated the corporal to defect, public opprobrium against the LAF gained in frequency and intensity after Hezbollah deployed its fighters in Syria and fought for Damascus and, more important, after the LAF attacks on Shaikh Ahmad Al Asir in Sidon’s Abrah district in June 2013. Such sectarian accusations did not bode well for the supra-national institution. As Sunni Lebanese formed the majority among the LAF rank-and-file, a defection, even if extremely rare, posed a serious challenge to military leaders who concentrated on strengthening the army’s non-sectarian characteristics.
While this might indeed be an isolated case and, when compared with the presence of several hundred European nationals fighting alongside the Free Syrian Army, Al Nusra and similar outfits, the ominous development was not a mundane occurrence that could be easily dismissed.
